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one more orbit in this arena of disbelief, this thing that has failed time and time again to substantiate its
real power and its architecture in painting and other forms. Now once we start to believe that these
structures are really mental constructs, once we begin to hallucinate this belief over and over and
over again, we begin to want something else. You really want to do something; you really want to
engage in some kind of magic, some kind of a structural coup; you want these notational systems,
these galaxies of inquiry, to coalesce into some kind of plausible feedback system.
What happens when you believe that you're structuralizing thought is that the next step is that
you want to structuralize the uncontrollable aspects of thought. You want to get at the madness that
has powered great art for centuries. Somehow, you want to create some kind of plausible ready-to-
launch execution of carefully tuned images, industrial architectural symbols, semiology, linguistical
structures, some kind of aurora borealis that would confirm that you were actually functioning in an
exteriorized fashion. These things began to look like devices. They want to be devices. They want to
be like lie detectors. They want to be things that look like they were doing something else: this large
belt, this spring system that one could actually mount, one could generate real energy through this wind
power, push some force through these tunnels, through these telescoping tunnels that led to all these
disasters; these cross tracks, these collisions, this raw material going into transformation chambers,
this alchemist's nightmare, this tableau of exteriorized thought and gesture, this rage of pulled back,
almost ready for combat material. Device to Convert Chilling Underground Winds into Memory
(1980; Bruce Gallery, Edinboro State College, Edinboro, Pennsylvania) is a system that is looking into a
challenge of counterforces. Here's a mind that wants to challenge its mutant appendages. It wants to
engage in some sort of step into, and away from, artifice, but with one foot on one side and
one foot on the other. It skirts through this balance between real power, real action and illusion,
metaphor, fantasy. Station for Detaining and Blinding Radio-Active Horses (1981-82), Rijksmu-
seum Kroller-Miiller, Otterlo, Holland, is very much a structural mental housing. It's what I refer to as a
way station between somebody like Jackson Pollock's frenzy and the reciprocating surface. And this
jungle apparatus of flues and fences and pathways, channels and receivers, of transformers, of
generators, of relay systems—all these imagistic counterparts of thinking—there's this world that
operates between the artist and the receiver by excavating the raw material from the ground. But raw
material that traditionally was used immediately as a sculptural element towards some sort of total
transformation is here held back, retained, ready for re-entry, ready for entry into this sort of cerebral
horse race. In front of it are tracks, blinders, things that suggest disruption or corruption,
some sort of violation of these mental pathways that might emanate from this walk, midpoint between sending and receiving. This thing is emanating electrical-signs in image systems. Electricity
here is almost like thinking. The generator becomes the mind, the receiver, the pathways, the gates,
the valves, the vents.
Impulse Reactor. A Device for Detecting, Entering and Converting Past Lies Traveling Underground and in the Air (1980), a temporary installation shown in Basel, Switzerland and Sonnabend
Gallery, New York, is kind of a nuclear power plant of the mind. Here we have this arena, this arsenal,
this space. We have these pulled back kernels that represent our raw thoughts in stones, uranium
that is excavated from the site. It is not fed through any kind of processing but retained, ready to be
turned into a force that would pass through this exteriorized mental armature. Impulse Reactor wants
to be a detection device. You walk in here and you see a work that has its lines out, almost like a radium
105

Turner's 'View of Venice: Ducal Palace, Dogana, with Part of San Giorgio'; Washington Allston and Barriere's Villa Aldobrandini; A Study of Two Paracas Fragments; 'And the Mind Grew Fingers'; Notes; Friends of the Museum; Oberlin Friends of Art; Staff

one more orbit in this arena of disbelief, this thing that has failed time and time again to substantiate its
real power and its architecture in painting and other forms. Now once we start to believe that these
structures are really mental constructs, once we begin to hallucinate this belief over and over and
over again, we begin to want something else. You really want to do something; you really want to
engage in some kind of magic, some kind of a structural coup; you want these notational systems,
these galaxies of inquiry, to coalesce into some kind of plausible feedback system.
What happens when you believe that you're structuralizing thought is that the next step is that
you want to structuralize the uncontrollable aspects of thought. You want to get at the madness that
has powered great art for centuries. Somehow, you want to create some kind of plausible ready-to-
launch execution of carefully tuned images, industrial architectural symbols, semiology, linguistical
structures, some kind of aurora borealis that would confirm that you were actually functioning in an
exteriorized fashion. These things began to look like devices. They want to be devices. They want to
be like lie detectors. They want to be things that look like they were doing something else: this large
belt, this spring system that one could actually mount, one could generate real energy through this wind
power, push some force through these tunnels, through these telescoping tunnels that led to all these
disasters; these cross tracks, these collisions, this raw material going into transformation chambers,
this alchemist's nightmare, this tableau of exteriorized thought and gesture, this rage of pulled back,
almost ready for combat material. Device to Convert Chilling Underground Winds into Memory
(1980; Bruce Gallery, Edinboro State College, Edinboro, Pennsylvania) is a system that is looking into a
challenge of counterforces. Here's a mind that wants to challenge its mutant appendages. It wants to
engage in some sort of step into, and away from, artifice, but with one foot on one side and
one foot on the other. It skirts through this balance between real power, real action and illusion,
metaphor, fantasy. Station for Detaining and Blinding Radio-Active Horses (1981-82), Rijksmu-
seum Kroller-Miiller, Otterlo, Holland, is very much a structural mental housing. It's what I refer to as a
way station between somebody like Jackson Pollock's frenzy and the reciprocating surface. And this
jungle apparatus of flues and fences and pathways, channels and receivers, of transformers, of
generators, of relay systems—all these imagistic counterparts of thinking—there's this world that
operates between the artist and the receiver by excavating the raw material from the ground. But raw
material that traditionally was used immediately as a sculptural element towards some sort of total
transformation is here held back, retained, ready for re-entry, ready for entry into this sort of cerebral
horse race. In front of it are tracks, blinders, things that suggest disruption or corruption,
some sort of violation of these mental pathways that might emanate from this walk, midpoint between sending and receiving. This thing is emanating electrical-signs in image systems. Electricity
here is almost like thinking. The generator becomes the mind, the receiver, the pathways, the gates,
the valves, the vents.
Impulse Reactor. A Device for Detecting, Entering and Converting Past Lies Traveling Underground and in the Air (1980), a temporary installation shown in Basel, Switzerland and Sonnabend
Gallery, New York, is kind of a nuclear power plant of the mind. Here we have this arena, this arsenal,
this space. We have these pulled back kernels that represent our raw thoughts in stones, uranium
that is excavated from the site. It is not fed through any kind of processing but retained, ready to be
turned into a force that would pass through this exteriorized mental armature. Impulse Reactor wants
to be a detection device. You walk in here and you see a work that has its lines out, almost like a radium
105

Identifier

AMAM_Bulletin_041_002_0035.tif

Rights

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